Exploring John Clare Through Video Games
A great deal of material has been produced on John Clare. His life, loves and career have been analysed from many angles and through many mediums – books, films, even plays. But no one (as far as I am aware) had explored John Clare through a video game.
In this article (originally created for publication in 2025) I will explore the power of video games as a medium for interactive storytelling; how video games are uniquely able to adapt to the audience and can create empathetic connections. I propose that this medium can inquire into Clare’s life and work in new ways and reach new audiences.
Clare’s Escape – a John Clare Video Game
Clare’s Escape is a short game centered on John Clare’s flight from High Beach Asylum in Epping and his long walk home in the summer of 1841. Clare documented the walk multiple times in his own lifetime, the first written soon after he arrived back in Northborough in his prose ‘Journey out of Essex’.
I am by far not the first to explore this specific episode in Clare’s life, many have trod before me including Adam Fould’s The Quickening Maze [Vintage, 2010] and Ian Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison [Hamilton, 2005] in writing, or Andrew Kötting’s By Our Selves [2015] through film. Each creator has used this journey as a pivotal vehicle of the story they want to tell.
“Fell in with some gypsies, one of whom offered to assist in my escape from the madhouse by hiding me in his camp”
– John Clare’s own account
The walk provides a distinct chapter to explore wider aspects of Clare’s life. It takes place over a set timeframe (three and a half days as defined by Clare in his writings), and provides us a pathway through the countryside to follow in his footsteps.
The ‘Journey Out of Essex‘ offers potent metaphors; from leaving the proximity of London and returning to his home, Clare was walking back towards familiarity and towards a supposed ‘wife’ who had already died. He travelled almost penniless – at times eating grass by the roadside – reliant on handouts to survive. His account of being misled, of struggling to read road signs and his jumbled sense of direction speak to the confusion of this mental state.
His experience of the people he met would have brought into stark contrast the callousness of strangers compared with the care displayed by his Helpston neighbors as he neared home. Moving on foot through the rural landscape, he would have been constantly reminded of enclosure and the parcelling off of the natural world.
It is easy to see why the walk episode is so frequently explored in creative work. The opportunity presented in a video game is to enable the audience (the player) to experience the walk in Clare’s shoes and see through Clare’s eyes. They can experience first-hand his ever-present fear of poverty, his unclear state of mind and the loss of his landscape.
Why video games?
Video games (or simply ‘games’) can be as complex and rich a medium for storytelling as movies or literature. This may come as a surprise to those who only encounter games through (often sensationalist) reports in the media, but there are games that fill every entertainment and narrative niche.
There are blockbuster games that excite the player with sensory spectacle[1] – but demand little from the player’s imagination (similar to a Hollywood action movie) through to games that challenge the audience with complex topics to traverse[2], meaningful consequences[3] or mind-bending puzzles[4].
The common factor in games is that the audience plays an active role in guiding their own experience. A video game is not a fixed experience. It does not demand completion by the player – they do not need to read every word of text, or explore every nook and cranny. The game designer creates an environment for the player to explore and interact with at their own pace.
The agency the player has is in marked contrast to the passive observer role of a movie-goer – where the narrative and viewpoint is defined by the director and the audience sees and hears the world through the director’s eyes. Every movie-goer receives the same ‘broadcast’, with little open to interpretation. Games provide the player with agency within the narrative, enabling them to set the direction the character takes or define how the character reacts to a situation. This is a unique characteristic of video games, perhaps the only other medium to get close is immersive theatre.
The interactive nature of video games renders them a powerful medium for engaging with stories rather than simply receiving stories. The first-hand nature is especially powerful for creating empathy – connecting the audience directly to the experiences of the protagonist.
It may be tawdry to mention, but games are also globally popular. In 2024, the video game industry was worth $184 billion, more than the music and movie industries combined [5].
I hope I am landing a multi-faceted argument for the value of video games. Dismissing all video games as ‘a waste of time’ or ‘irrelevant’ is as short-sighted as making the same sweeping statement about all film or all literature. This is a powerful and popular creative medium ripe for exploring to share John Clare’s story in a new way and with a large potential audience.
Designing the Clare’s Escape game
Creating a game is similar to designing any other narrative – it requires a plot, characters and environments. The plot structure and chapters of Clare’s Escape come from Clare’s written accounts. These semi-reliable writings define the locations the player visits (High Beach, St Neots, Stilton are all mentioned on the route) and the characters the player encounters (including gypsies, a toll-gate attendant, the neighbours from Helpston). Each of these characters appears in the game, they encounter Clare as he described and speak the lines he attributed to them.
“Some where on the London side near the “Plough” public-house, a man passed me on horseback, in a slop frock, and said, “Here’s another of the broken-down haymakers,” and threw me a penny to get a half pint of beer”
– John Clare’s own account
But a linear path following Clare’s account to the letter however, would forgo the opportunities of the medium. By enriching the prescribed environments with elements from Clare’s biography, historical references and fictional encounters, players can explore side-stories and uncover a richer picture.
My background in digital experience design (for banking websites, train station kiosks etc) is focussed on removing friction – to take the user from ‘need A’ to ‘outcome B’ as quickly and easily as possible. Enabling the user to view their account balance or buy a train ticket without the interface getting in their way. Game design, however, is interested in the intentional use of friction. Employing friction to draw the players attention to something in the story, slowing them down to create tension or presenting a challenge to solve in order to draw focus within the narrative.
In this game, by tasking the player to find a key for the locked asylum gate, the player must explore High Beach and speak to Mrs Allen – uncovering more about the semi-open nature of the Asylum and revealing Mr Allen’s proclivity for money-making schemes.
“…she cautioned me on the way to put something in my hat to keep the crown up and said in a lower tone “You’ll be noticed.” But not knowing at what she hinted – I took no notice and made no reply.”
– John Clare’s own account
little later, Clare encounters the ‘rather handsome’ gypsy woman in a place he tentatively guesses as St Ives. Through the player’s experience she is rather helpful and not as mysterious as Clare implied. Perhaps Clare’s distrust of strangers (and women in particular) affected his view of the encounter as it is replayed in his own account.
The player experiences the game as John Clare, they experience his inner dialogue and can determine Clare’s actions within the outline provided by his own version. But a game is also able to engage the player at multiple levels and encourage them to think beyond what they are being presented with and consider what Clare would do, or why Clare might have reacted in such a way.
Introducing Clare to new audiences
One of the aims of bringing Clare to video game form is to introduce his life and work to new audiences. A game playing audience who may never have heard of John Clare as well as Clare fans who have never played a video game before. Given this context, it is vital for the game to be as accessible as possible – to reduce the complexity of what is physically and cognitively required from the player to experience the game.
From a physical perspective the controls are very simple – enabling players to use the method (keyboard or game controller) that is easiest or natural to them. There is just one ‘interact’ button – games can be daunting to new audiences who see dexterous children hammering away at seemingly impossible speeds. Complex controls are unnecessary for this narrative. I want everyone to experience Clare’s journey without getting stuck or pulled out of the immersion by being bamboozled.
From a comprehension perspective, I have made no attempt to recreate Clare’s speech (although his written words are retained as the author intended). Games can enable players to choose which language they experience in the game world and this can be a powerful storytelling tool. In ‘Still Wakes The Deep’ [6] a depiction of an oil rig disaster in 1975, Scottish Gaelic is provided to create a more authentic world. However, I employ twenty first century English in Clare’s Escape as a conscious design choice to forego accuracy (sidestepping Clare’s Northamptonshire vocabulary) in favour of wider comprehension and accessibility.
It may be tempting to think that a video game depiction of a story is synonymous with simplification or ‘dumbing-down’ of the story, but this is not the case. Games are unique in the ability to adapt and enable the player to experience the story at a depth of their choosing. A player with a lower attention span or limited reading level may rush through a game, connecting primarily with the attention grabbing moments or broad themes. Whereas another player may prefer to explore slowly, looking behind every available door and may take many times longer to experience the same story. ‘Environmental storytelling’ for example is story conveyed through the design or set dressing of a game’s world, rather than explicitly through words or dialogue. Video games employ storytelling in different forms to support the variety of player behaviours.
An example of this optional storytelling in Clare’s Escape are the ‘lost papers’ – scraps of Clare’s poetry to be discovered strewn across the landscape by the players who explore in depth. These scraps of poetry are designed to represent fragments of Clare’s memory and to provide serendipitous discovery that may provide a player’s first encounter with Clare’s written words.
A final word on accessibility is the visual style. As you can see from the images accompanying this article, the style is simple and ‘early video game-like’, reminiscent of role-playing-games (RPGs) of the 90s and 2000s. Although video games are capable of highly realistic graphics, this simple pixelated style is chosen to make the game easy to visually understand by a wide audience and to place the focus on the story rather than the image.
Depicting Mental Health
When Clare undertook his escape he was deeply troubled. He had been imprisoned for four years, but in the two years preceding his mental state had deteriorated. He had made multiple attempts to leave High Beach (his own mind turning him back), and the encounter with gypsies who promised him a way out in July 1841 came at a time when Clare himself stated he felt “deeply melancholy”.
“My soul is apathy – a ruin vast
– Clare’s last addition to ‘Child Harold’ before leaving the asylum
Time cannot clear the ruined mass away
My life is hell – the hopeless die is cast
And manhoods prime is premature decay”
Depicting mental health issues in any medium is challenging and it is vital not to trivialise or sensationalise the experience. Games are able to explore mental health uniquely well due to the first-hand connection of the player to the story and the ability of the game designer to change the ‘rules’, shifting the player’s understanding of a game space.
In Clare’s Escape the player may witness Clare’s psychosis in High Beach, overhearing conversations where he is mocked for being low-class by people who may or may not exist – reflecting his feeling of being out of place and abandoned by his friends. Later, there are more visually impactful hallucinations where Clare clearly cannot trust what he sees. The player is experiencing the world as John Clare, so when path appears to literally fall away at Clare’s feet, or when Will-o’-the-wisps approach in the dark, the player may question their own senses.
Clares depression and lapses into mental ill-health are experienced by the player as episodes, rather than as a constant state. Players are encouraged to reflect on Clare’s experience, on how he was cared for in Epping, how others treat him, and the veracity of their own experiences in the game.
The future of telling Clare stories in Games
Through this essay I have introduced the powerful capabilities of storytelling through video games. I believe there are a myriad of opportunities for games to contribute to the exploration of Clare’s life and work.
Permit me a few flights of fantasy; imagine putting players in control of Victorian-era farms, enabling them to experience first hand when their hard earned land is enclosed without recourse. Or, a game balancing the demands on a fledgling poet not to offend patrons while maintaining artistic integrity. Or perhaps, digitally recreating the sights, sounds and communities and environments that no longer exist; showing the impact both on the ecology and society following enclosure and the drainage of the Fens.
I look forward to seeing video games contribute to introducing new audiences to John Clare and to enable existing audiences to engage with his story in new ways. To access Clare Escape, visit www.claresescape.com
[1] ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Call of Duty’ will be names familiar to many
[2] ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice‘ explores psychosis and Celtic culture
[3] Tell Tale Games pioneered narrative rich games in 2004, a mantle now picked up by developers such as Don’t Nod
[4] Critical successes include ‘Portal 2‘ from Valve or more recently ‘Viewfinder’ from Sad Owl Studios
[5] In 2024, the video game industry was worth $184 billion, was more than the music and movie industries combined. Dentsu, 2024
[6] Developed by Chinese Room, 2024